A History of Assam c10.2

c10.2

At the present day the word Koch is a term of some ambiguity. In Assam Proper it has become the name of a Hindu caste, into which are received the converts to Hinduism from the ranks of the Kachāri, Lālung, Mikir and other tribes; and, as the process of conversion is still continuing, the number of persons described as Koch is increasing rapidly. In North Bengal and Goālpāra, on the other hand, it is a term which is falling into disrepute; and it has, to a great extent, been abandoned in favour of the appellation Rājbansi. It is here generally regarded as indicative of race, that is to say, as the name of a tribe and not a caste, but the ethnic character of the people so called has been a matter of some controversy. The Koches are frequently referred to as Kuvacha in the *Purāns* and *Tantras*. The historian of Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khilji's invasion at the end of the twelfth century says that the features of "the Koch, Mech and Thāru, tribes" resembled those of a tribe of Southern Siberia. That acute observer Bryan Hodgson classed the Koch with the Bodo and Dhimal, and the same view is taken by Buchanan and in the Dacca Blue Book. On the other hand, Colonel Dalton considered them to be Dravidian, and Risley, while admitting an intermixture with Mongoloid stock, held that Dravidian characteristics predominate. This divergence of views seems to have arisen from the confusion caused by the use of the term Rājbansi. It originally referred to an entirely distinct community of Dravidian affinities, but was afterwards adopted by the Koches west of the Monās river, who, when they attorned to Hinduism, appropriated the caste name of the most numerous Hinduized community in their neighbourhood. So long as the Koch kings ruled, there was a considerable intermingling of the two races in the country subject to their domination. There seems, however, to be no doubt that the true Koches were a Mongoloid race, very closely allied to the Meches and Gāros; and we find that in Jalpaiguri, Koch Bihār and Goālpāra, the persons now known as Rājbansi are either pure Koches who, though dark, have a distinctly Mongoloid physiognomy, or else a mixed breed, in which the Mongoloid element usually preponderates. The Koch language is now practically extinct, but the traces of it which remain show that it was almost identical with Gāro. Ralph Fitch, who visited the Koch kingdom in the sixteenth century, says: "The people have ears which be marvelous great, of a span long, which they draw out by devices when they be young." This practice, though since abandoned by the Koches, is is still common amongst the Gāros. In former times the Koches and Meches freely intermarried, but the conversion of the former to Hinduism has now caused the practice to be discontinued. East of the Monās, where there were no Rājbansis properly so-called, the Koches, as the dominant tribe, were admitted to Hinduism without any change of their tribal name, but members of other Mongoloid tribes who afterwards followed their example were allowed to do so only by sinking their old designation and joining the ranks of the already-Hinduized Koches.*